This publication introduces and provides a framework for Earth Systems Education (ESE), an effort to establish within U.S. schools more effective programs designed to increase the public's understanding of the Earth system. The publication presents seven "understandings" around which curriculum can be organized and materials selected in a section describing the format of ESE. The rationale for the ESE effort, the need for this approach in the nation's schools, some of the efforts underway and some of the problems that can be foreseen in the implementation of an integrated science curriculum based on ESE are discussed. The following projects in ESE are described: (1) Program for Leadership in ESE (PLESE); (2) Global Change Education; (3) Remote Sensing and On-Line Databases; (4) Biological and Earth Systems Science (BES); (5) Global Change and the Great Lakes; and (6) Earth Systems in the Middle School Curriculum. Comprising half of the document is a collection of journal articles relating to ESE: "Teaching from a Global Point of View"; "Earth Appreciation"; "Earth-Systems Science"; "What Every 17-Year-Old Should Know about Planet Earth: The Report of a Conference of Educators and Geoscientists"; "A Place for EE in the Restructured Science Curriculum"; and "Down to Earth Biology." (MCO)

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